So you agree that Israel is not an atheist entity, then?
Why does evolution select against atheists?
- Thread starter S.A.M.
- Start date
So you agree that Israel is not an atheist entity, then?
And so, then, is Israel, no? Or are you backing off of your assertion that Israeli actions are examples of atheism in action? Why all the juggling of different terms?
Whose mistake? And what do you even mean by "Jews?" All the reasonable people that I know understand that "Jewish" is both an ethnicity and a religion.
Ethnicity seems to be a major issue whenever atheists get into religious issues.
Any reasonable person would know that Judaism is a religion.
The Zionists who made aliya initially were all Labour Zionists most of them communists and hence essentially atheists. They looked down upon the religious Mizrahi.
And indeed, they do. But they also understand that this is not exclusive of Judaism also being an ethnic group. And, being sophisticated people, they have little trouble applying these variegated understandings.
You will note that traditional definitions of Judaism feature a biological element: if you are born to a Jewish mother, you are Jewish, regardless of what you believe. This conflation of religious and biological definition is a long-standing feature of Judaism, and one that reasonable people have long since learned to work with.
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That is surely just a caraciture of the situation. The mistake we are making is taking you seriously.
Its history. Easy enough to read up on the history of Zionism and the opinion that Labour Zionists had, not only of the religion [or superstition as they called it] but also how they treated the Mizrahi.
WTF are you talking about?
Well, at least you can admit it
You and I have to make them up, too, and what answer an atheist comes to is sufficient to answer the question.
How do you find your answers? How do I? Is it so impossible, then, that one should, in asking a theist to come away from faith, offer at least that one personal interpretation of how to find the answers?
Or is the message, "Just give up God and fuck off anyway"?
Why fall back to moronic responses like, "There is no absolute right or wrong"? It's bullshit. Of course there's not. And are you utterly paralyzed in the world? No. So why not offer any given theist who is targeted for an appeal to logic and reason at least that explanation of how logic and reason work?
I think it is morbidly hilarious how our atheist evangelists behave with religious zeal, but since they're atheists, they're not religious.
Quit cold turkey? Fine. But there are still methods. Believe me, I'm a smoker, and I've been through it a few times. I know cold turkey.
And it's a fine metaphor you offer in that. I know some smokers who quit cold turkey, and they turned to fitness to fill the void. Some turned to food. Some turned to sex. Some went on long retreats away from everything and everyone they know. These are all ways in which they filled that vacuum left behind not only by the drug itself, but also the social aspect of smoking. I remember one time I quit, and at work during the first week I would go on break and think ... "Yeah, so ... what the hell do I do now?"
It's like one is afraid to admit that furious masturbation and an overdose of caffeine got them through the nicotine withdrawal, so they just say, "Quit! Quit! Quit!'
Hey, you know what? If people actually give a damn, they try to help answer those questions.
He might be a decent biologist, but there's nothing particularly impressive about his atheistic evangelism. It's the same balbutive, with generally better sentence structure, that I could get on an internet board.
And you, likewise, deserve the bashing you get for acting like a half-witted, petty, bigoted thug.
And you know what really chafes about it? You're proving Christians right.
Good fucking job. Applause. We all bow to the stunning wisdom of making a point of empowering that which you hate.
Right on, Spidergoat. Attaboy.
Spidergoat said:
You and I have to make them up, too, and what answer an atheist comes to is sufficient to answer the question.
How do you find your answers? How do I? Is it so impossible, then, that one should, in asking a theist to come away from faith, offer at least that one personal interpretation of how to find the answers?
Or is the message, "Just give up God and fuck off anyway"?
Why fall back to moronic responses like, "There is no absolute right or wrong"? It's bullshit. Of course there's not. And are you utterly paralyzed in the world? No. So why not offer any given theist who is targeted for an appeal to logic and reason at least that explanation of how logic and reason work?
I think it is morbidly hilarious how our atheist evangelists behave with religious zeal, but since they're atheists, they're not religious.
Quit cold turkey? Fine. But there are still methods. Believe me, I'm a smoker, and I've been through it a few times. I know cold turkey.
And it's a fine metaphor you offer in that. I know some smokers who quit cold turkey, and they turned to fitness to fill the void. Some turned to food. Some turned to sex. Some went on long retreats away from everything and everyone they know. These are all ways in which they filled that vacuum left behind not only by the drug itself, but also the social aspect of smoking. I remember one time I quit, and at work during the first week I would go on break and think ... "Yeah, so ... what the hell do I do now?"
It's like one is afraid to admit that furious masturbation and an overdose of caffeine got them through the nicotine withdrawal, so they just say, "Quit! Quit! Quit!'
Hey, you know what? If people actually give a damn, they try to help answer those questions.
He might be a decent biologist, but there's nothing particularly impressive about his atheistic evangelism. It's the same balbutive, with generally better sentence structure, that I could get on an internet board.
And you, likewise, deserve the bashing you get for acting like a half-witted, petty, bigoted thug.
And you know what really chafes about it? You're proving Christians right.
Good fucking job. Applause. We all bow to the stunning wisdom of making a point of empowering that which you hate.
Right on, Spidergoat. Attaboy.
I thought this was a very good answer and the only answer.
Would you say that being a christian or muslim is required to be a moral person ? Are there no decent athiests ?
How does that happen. So the question really is, why are some people good and some people bad and all sorts in between ?
It has nothing to do with religion.
Morality did not come from religious texts, religious texts came from our understanding of what we feel is right and wrong from learning what it takes to live in a peaceful state the opposite which is war. We are social creatures, like it or not who have had to learn to live with each other for our own gain.
My question to SAM and those who believe that the texts are truly the word of GOD or a GOD is why the hell do they represent only the issues of the time and not all time including future time. Why have they changed over time at all and why make any adjustments to what were once considered acceptable acts or ideas by their leaders which are now considered archaic and inhumane. You would think they would have gotten it right the first time and only needed one time.
Could it be that it is just the words and ideas of humans stuck in time with learned morals from their long steady evolving state. Just smart enough to put it down on paper ?
Why if we need religion don't animals kill each other off to extinction ? They are not religious. Therefore they must not have any moral bearings. Yet they have been very successful.
Define "define." What is a useful definition?
Define a decent Muslim ? Or Christian ?
That's just it, it's all the same. It is how we treat our fellow humans. It has been the same for far longer than any religious text can explain. It is what is right (treat someone how you want to be treated ) and what is wrong (don't sleep with your neighbors wife) because your neighbor will get pissed off and might kill you in a jealous rage. Who is wrong in that instance ?
Do you think the first person that go killed for that offense came after or before religious texts appeared. Most likely came from a big club.
If you abuse a dog and he bites you whose fault is it ?
I know decent people who are religious and who are not. I know decent muslims and christians and there are obviously some who are not. I know decent athiests and some who are not. What I do is stop hanging around the ones who aren't regardless of the faith or lack of.
That's just it, it's all the same. It is how we treat our fellow humans. It has been the same for far longer than any religious text can explain. It is what is right (treat someone how you want to be treated ) and what is wrong (don't sleep with your neighbors wife) because your neighbor will get pissed off and might kill you in a jealous rage. Who is wrong in that instance ?
Do you think the first person that go killed for that offense came after or before religious texts appeared. Most likely came from a big club.
If you abuse a dog and he bites you whose fault is it ?
I know decent people who are religious and who are not. I know decent muslims and christians and there are obviously some who are not. I know decent athiests and some who are not. What I do is stop hanging around the ones who aren't regardless of the faith or lack of.
What is you question ?
When what ?
When did it start ?
If that is the question than it is a good one. Neither of us can answer when it started because nobody can claim to have that kind of knowledge. Besides, the answer to when something was determined to be a bad practice or a good one came at different times.
When the jealous man clubbed his lovers lover to death for sleeping with his woman everyone in the vicinity was probably taking mental notes. I think the answer was pretty obvious. Don't mess with your neighbor's woman or man for that part.
It is wrong and you won't like the result.
When what ?
When did it start ?
If that is the question than it is a good one. Neither of us can answer when it started because nobody can claim to have that kind of knowledge. Besides, the answer to when something was determined to be a bad practice or a good one came at different times.
When the jealous man clubbed his lovers lover to death for sleeping with his woman everyone in the vicinity was probably taking mental notes. I think the answer was pretty obvious. Don't mess with your neighbor's woman or man for that part.
It is wrong and you won't like the result.
So clubbing on head is okay with you?
I meant when we treat our fellow humans? Under what circumstances?
Eg if I were to say that my aim is to see the end of atheism in society, that even one atheist is one too many, what would be your decent response?
I meant when we treat our fellow humans? Under what circumstances?
Eg if I were to say that my aim is to see the end of atheism in society, that even one atheist is one too many, what would be your decent response?
I'm interested in what you consider difficult about the definition of "decent."
I'm also interested in your inability to define "atheist" in a coherent way.
Moral action is often logical, but often not. Is there a moral calculus? I think we have to use personal judgment. The problem is no one wants to face the consequences of their actions, to they defer the hard questions to some authority, it's lazy. My point of view is that morality never did come from religion, it came from our personal judgment as social animals.
I don't have a problem with zeal. Never did. I am evangelist for things that make sense, for things that have evidence.
I don't much give a damn what fool things people believe, just don't force them on me through such notions as the US being a "christian nation" or that morality can only come from an authoritative book on morals (that happens to be full of hypocrisy).
Then you write a bestseller. He's brilliant, polite, and kicks the ass of the religious every time he debates them.
Bring it on. I don't think I'm being thuggish, but I guess no one is supposed to question religion the same way we question everything else.
About what? They love an enemy, that's what religion is all about, creating an in-group, and an out-group, so you can feel loved and superior. I don't hate individual religious people, in fact most of my friends are religious of one form or another. I know that people have their own unique life story, and that religion may fit with them, it may work. I also don't expect much from society in general, so, so what if people believe crazy shit... I'm just here to say it's crazy shit.
Still don't know what the hell you're talking about.